


Cross and crown

by Tyellas



Series: Lab T-4 [19]
Category: The Shape of Water (2017)
Genre: Dr. Hoffstetler mention, Elisa mention, Friendship, Gen, Hoffstetler Lives, Pie, Post-Movie, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-20 11:37:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13716882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas
Summary: Zelda thinks the Events are all over. But it turns out Elisa had two last gifts for her. That honest liar, Giles, and something that's both welcome and trouble, just like Elisa was.





	Cross and crown

**Author's Note:**

> A direct follow-on to [Wish you were here...](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13629486) because I had to see Giles and Zelda get Elisa's package.

Zelda balanced a plate with a piece of pie in one hand and her handbag in the other. She eyed the front of THE ORPHEUM, glaring at the slippery fire-escape stairs.

Who in their right mind would’ve lived up those stairs in this firetrap, rattled by twenty-four-seven movie mediocrity? Not that Elisa had been in her right mind – not at the end. Her friend, that Giles, still wasn’t, either. But he was cheerful about it. That was something. Zelda sighed and began the long haul up in the November rain. It felt like it hadn’t stopped raining since all the Events had gone down.

Zelda knew they’d gotten off lightly, considering they'd stolen a top-secret experiment. She and Giles had been swept off to some federal pen and interrogated for three days solid, including a go-around with some puffed-up general. She'd been impressed by how Elisa's friend held it together when the chips were down. Just when Giles had said that he expected to pick out a prison husband, it had been over. They’d been told they had friends in high places and they’d better keep clean in the future. Zelda was told to not return to Occam. That she’d be on secondment to a different department.

She’d seen Giles a few times since then, once right afterwards. The artist had gone home to his own Orpheum garret to find it turned upside-down. Tacked in the middle of his drawing board, where a splendid drawing of Elisa and her creature had been, was a search-and-seizure notice five pages long. They’d taken all his art of the creature, every sketch, and anything that could possibly be Elisa.

He’d said that Elisa’s place was ransacked, too. Most of her things were swept away – her purses and shoes, her books, the tins she kept things in against the damp, all gone to be dissected for spy secrets. A waste: they wouldn’t find anything. Elisa had kept all her secrets inside her heart.

The MPs had seen what Strickland had done to Zelda’s place (Brewster hadn’t cleaned up) and left it at that. When Zelda, on her one post-Events visit to Giles, reflected that she would’ve liked something to remember Elisa by, Giles had offered Zelda her pick of Elisa’s other household oddments. She’d left with a duck-shaped shoe brush and a sad feeling. The weight of the duck under her arm, the winter cold setting in, seemed to say that entire chapter of her life was over.

But that didn’t mean life was done with her. First, there’d been a call from the fancy college hospital. A certain Dr. Hoffstetler was able to see visitors. She'd gone to his bedside and leaned over as he whispered his own story. What Strickland had done to Hoffstetler had shocked her so bad, she barely registered the doctor’s apology. She’d seized on every holiday since then as a reason to go back. She’d just done a Thanksgiving visit.

Then, Giles had called. She’d been home, even caught the phone before Brewster did. When she’d hung up, she’d told that man of hers it was the day after Thanksgiving and she’d spend it as she liked, even with their car, since she was paying for the gas.

She still wasn’t sure how to go on with Brewster. She didn’t blame him for cracking with Strickland there. But she couldn’t forget he’d shaken Strickland’s hand.

Zelda had finally arrived at Apartment B. She could hear the new tenants of Apartment A next door. Through the thin door, a young woman was declaiming, _“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn!”_ Zelda _humphed_. Beatniks. Some spoiled kids who didn’t know from starving art or those negro streets. She knocked. The door drifted open at her touch.

Giles was inside his mare’s nest of a studio. He’d salvaged a few of Elisa’s oddments – her table and chairs, a blue rug. The tall man, his thatch of sandy hair running wild, was sitting at Elisa’s table, sketching passionately in a notebook. He had a pencil behind each ear. “Zelda! Come in, do come in.”

“Brought you some pie,” she sighed, collapsing on a chair.

“You shouldn’t have,” Giles said.

“You are right, I shouldn’t’ve. But I was at that hospital first. They're still not letting Dr. Hoffstetler eat real food.” Pie was the least she could offer after what the doctor, their friend in high places, had done for them.

“That poor dear man,” Giles sighed.

Zelda shrugged. “We’re lucky they want his science enough that he used his pull to get us off the hook.” Hoffstetler didn’t seem very happy about it, in his hospital bed at Johns Hopkins Trauma. The MP outside his door there always gave Zelda the chills. Yet he reached out and held her hand despite the MP’s silent, disapproving eyes.

Giles knotted his hands together. “Oh, I know. I know.”

“I see you’ve got something sweet already.” There was a box of candy on the table.

Giles’ smile went manic. “This! This is what I called you about! Read this!” He fumbled under the candy box to hand Zelda a postcard.

As Zelda read, the messy apartment around her fell away. She was back in the green paint and pipes of Occam, in the laundry area, looking at Elisa’s small, spiky handwriting. Before she cried out, _Elisa sent this_ , she stopped. The man across the table from her was an artist, a forger. The postcard wasn’t franked. He was heartbreakingly convinced Elisa was still alive, out there somewhere with the creature. He might’ve faked it. Besides, the man was a good liar. She'd seen him in action. He could probably persuade himself his own forgery was real.

But…Zelda’d seen that handwriting a hundred times more than he had, she’d bet on it. And its understatement was just like Elisa. About a year back Zelda had opened up a laundry bag Elisa had hauled in from a lab and marked STAINED. The things inside had been drenched in green goo. When Zelda asked what had happened Elisa had just shrugged. More recently, after a standoffish week, Elisa had showed up with another laundry cart with an even bigger green surprise…

Zelda looked up under her lashes. Giles was still hovering. “I told you. I told you Elisa was alive. You thought I was crazy!”

“Oh, I still know you’re crazy. Looks like the rest of the world is, too.” Zelda looked at the postcard for the fifth time. “That is her handwriting, all right. I truly hope it is.”

Fascinating as this was, Zelda had something else to say. “Could you cover up that drawing board back there? It is offending my sensibilities.”

Giles blushed. “Sorry. It’s filth, I know. 'Smut and nothing but,' as Tom Lehrer sang. They pay, is the thing. I’ve given up on being respectable. It’s refreshing!” Giles hid a lot of oiled-looking anatomy under a blank sheet of paper. “There, fit for a lady. Tell me, how are _you_ doing? Still earning your crust at Occam?”

Zelda’s throat tightened, suddenly. You knuckled down and got through the bad times. But the minute someone said something nice, and meant it, you felt all the tears, waiting. She managed, “They moved me out of Occam, got me a job with the police and maybe the FBI, I’m not so sure. Something spooky.”

She fought the little hitch in her voice. “Cleaning up some _nasty_ stuff. Twenty-four hour call, going where they send us. Blood is one thing. I can deal with blood now. Blood where they didn’t leave it at that, they got artistic -- ” Zelda shuddered. “They say I’ll get used to it, but...I don’t know if that’s good.”

The man had the grace to look upset. “Let’s talk about something nicer. What would you do if you could?”

Zelda tried to sigh out the urge to cry. “I’ve spent my whole life fighting, feels like. I’ve had my cross. I wouldn’t mind the crown. If I had my druthers...I’d live in a nice house. Somewhere green and pretty, not too far out. Peaceful. Somewhere I wouldn’t have to worry for a while.” When she'd seen places like that in magazines, she'd saved the clippings and shared them with Elisa. Maybe it wasn’t much, a house in the suburbs. But black women, like her, weren’t even supposed to have that.

Giles went dreamy. “I know just the place. Ever been to upstate New York? Beautiful little village up there called Tuxedo. It feels just like Europe.”

Zelda softened, too. “Oh. I always dreamed of going to Europe. Paris...”

Giles said, with absolute conviction, “You’d love Paris and Paris would love you.” She couldn’t help smiling, joining this man in his sweet delusions. He went on. “Could you tuck me into a corner of your dream, if it was up in Tuxedo? I can’t even handle this place. It just slips away from me. I want to do my art, more than ever. It's all here, waiting!" He held up a pencil in each hand. "But I have to keep body and soul together.”

Zelda snorted. “That is just like a man. You got too used to Elisa running your life.”

“You could take over, if you wanted.”

“If someone’d pay me for it -- ” Zelda sighed.

“Believe me, if I could afford it -- ” Giles sighed, too. He tapped the postcard between them with one of his pencils, then moved the candy box to join it. “Speaking of ifs. If I don’t follow this to the letter, share this candy with you, it’ll be bad luck. Elisa’s final wish. Shall we? To absent friends?”

He undid the ribbon, lifted the lid with a flourish. “Ladies first.” Zelda delicately helped herself to the taffy on top. Giles plucked one up himself. Solemnly, they tapped their candies together.

After the first chew, Zelda made a face. “What flavor _is_ this? Brown should be chocolate.”

“Mmmmph.” Giles unstuck his teeth. “Mint molasses. My favorite. Elisa remembered. Oh, God.”  Blinking with tears, he groped for the box. He passed Zelda a different taffy, yellowish in its wax-paper wrapper. “Maybe you’ll like that one better. Could be orange, could be lemon. The things they do with the artificial color -- ”

Zelda opened it and looked at it without tasting it. “Well, it sure is a flavor I like. Is there more of that?”

Giles picked up a second bright candy and unfurled its wrapper. He sniffled and peered. Like Zelda, he was holding not a waxy disc of taffy, but a pair of coins. Solid gold ones. They looked old. One was pressed with an antique cross: another with a royal seal. “Shit. Shit!” Giles lifted the whole box of candy. “The weight. It’s wrong!" He flipped the box onto the table upside-down, pulled the pasteboard away. Against the formica, they both heard the muffled clink of fine metal, buffered by a few candies.

Zelda was bolt upright, quivering. “First, do we need all this drama? Second, how the hell?”

“He taught her to swim. In Florida. Shipwrecks.”

“Elisa! That woman...always daydreaming, of course she’d...that thing...” Then, they were both laughing and crying and laughing some more.

Giles was the one who picked up the count again. “So. One for you, one for me...”

Zelda caught her breath. “You’re still doing it. You really are.”

“As I said, her final wish.” Giles’ smile was serene.

She examined the two coins she held. “How much is this worth? A hundred dollars?”

Giles looked alarmed. “No, no. I went through a numismatics phase – there’s people that collect coins like these – dubloons, crowns, whatever you call them. Each one could be worth a few hundred. Could be thousands. Depending on the rarity.” He put another coin in front of Zelda. They were starting to stack up. Then he paused. "Maybe we should...pool them and split the value?"

Zelda missed that, tangled up in herself. “What do I do? Where do I sell them? They’ll think I stole them. Even if I sell them, I can’t get a bank account for this that my no-count husband won’t get his hands on.”

Giles moved one of his pencils to his mouth for a good chew. After a moment, he said, “That offer to run my life. Does that still stand?”

Zelda paused. “You’d make it official? On paper?”

Giles waved a hand airily. “I’d much rather sign your papers than the government ones.”

She gestured at the coins. “What’d you think of splitting all this between government bonds and dividends?”

Giles gaped. “Well, I – don’t you put it in the bank and they do whatever’s best?” Zelda gave him a sharp look. “Accounting and I don’t get along,” he explained.

She should have known. She should have figured. Giles obviously couldn’t, for all his talent, if he was living here. But just because Zelda’d never been rich didn’t mean she hadn’t thought about how she’d stay rich, if she could.

Was this how Elisa had felt, knowing she was going to break the creature out? For Zelda saw it all like it was about to happen. Giles hadn’t taken a simple box of candy when he’d thought half of it was Zelda’s due. Her gut trusted him to lie and forge some story a coin buyer could deal with. She’d protect him with accounts and numbers like she’d sheltered Elisa with words. They’d get out of Baltimore and Occam’s brutal shadow – that green pretty place like Europe sounded fine. A whole new chapter, their own break out. Maybe the good doctor could visit and recuperate for a spell.

As for Brewster, she’d give him an ultimatum. He could come with her and get off his booty and be the handyman he always said he was. Or he could stay in Baltimore. If he cared enough to come along, that was something. Enough to start over with, maybe. A whole new chapter.

“You count,” Zelda said, adding grandly, “and I will let you know.”

She watched and waited. Sure enough, Giles shared out what Elisa had given them, cross by crown.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, towards a happy ending. Ursula le Guin says, "The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid..." So, a happy ending where Zelda, and Giles, and - eventually - Dr. Hoffstetler can be their better selves, doing what they want to do. 
> 
> "I saw the best minds of my generation..." - The start of Alan Ginsberg's epic beatnik poem, HOWL.
> 
> I've got two shorter pieces lined up. Then, in March, after the TSOW novel comes out, something longer. Stranger. Self-indulgent. It'll have some more about those futures, and the two TSOW side characters who need something like that the most.


End file.
